Blog
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Code Liberation x BFI
We did a popup games exhibition, coordinated by Kiona Niehaus, with the BFI on June 16th, 2018 as part of their Women With a Movie Camera festival. The day was a day of activism and conversation at BFI Southbank went beyond the usual discourse about diversity in the film industry, calling for radical strategies to bring about structural change. We had a wonderful time showing off the games our members and friends have been working on so far this year as well as sharing conversations with women from a wide range of disciplines.
Games Creators Shown
- MEMORIA - Yumi’s Home
- Mimi sotudeh - Tampon Trawl
- Julia Makivic - Ghostsboi in the Land of the Dead & Other Games
- Clareese Hill
- Vaida Plankyte - Yearly
- Holly Pickering - Mama Seuss
- Gillian Wylde -Will Internets Eated Brain?
- Rachel Clancy - In Other Worlds
- Phoenix Perry & Charlie Ann Page - Bot Party
- Matheson Marcault - Art Deck
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London Design Week, Digital Design Weekend Exhibition at the V&A
Code Liberation worked in collaboration with the Processing Foundation, the V&A, Machines Room and Goldsmiths to run a series of eight workshops that resulted in an exhibition of new games created during these workshops. For the workshop we also created teaching resources for p5.js which include slides and sample code anyone can use for free to teach p5js.
This video is made using InVideo.io
###Download the workshop series.
Saskia Freeke was the lead instructor on this program as part of her residency with the Processing Foundation.
Games Creators Exhibited
- Nontokozo F. Sihwa
- Tokini Irene Fubara
- Mimi Sotudeh
- Katherine Reid
- Laura Cugusi
- Mandy Saunders
- Natasha Trotman
- Lorna Hamilton-Brown
- Elvia Vasconcelos
- Caroline Yan Zheng
- Rachel Clancy
- Federica Ciotti
- Jazz Willett
Nontokozo F. Sihwa
Title: Phone Home (2017)
Description: Transmissions for homesick aliens, as well as make her project, Nonto also helped teach this program.
Tokini Irene Fubara
Title: Border Ritual 2.0
Border Ritual 2.0 is a simple role-playing game that attempts to intervene on the process of crossing the UK Border.
Tokini Irene Fubara is PhD student at the University of Sussex, where she is concluding a practice-based research project on migration, race and surveillance technologies.
Mimi Sotudeh
Title: NAILED IT!
Paint your nails! Avoid the worms!
Mimi Sotudeh is an artist and filmmaker, currently in her final year studying BA Media and Communications at Goldsmiths.
K. Reid
Title: Lunar Alchemy
You have very unwisely been bitten by a werewolf. Luckily you have your lab, alchemical components and a vague memory of medication that might hold the lunar urges at bay. Better get on that hadn’t you?
K Reid works in art and technology and is frequently the person making sure the thing goes or getting excited about excel sheets. They first played games when the NES was a hot commodity and has been a passionate fan of handheld systems ever since. Their main interest is in narrative and the narrative possibilities interaction opens up. They are also far too fond of second person point of view which is clearly the fault of too many text adventure games as a child.
Laura Cugusi
Title: Partners in Crime
Every game is ultimately an interaction between individuals whereas the payoff for each player is affected by the decision of others. In game theory, the so called “prisoner’s dilemma” represents a conflict between doing what you think would be the best option for yourself, or choosing to consider others as well. “Partners in crime” is nothing more than a simulation of the famous prisoner dilemma. Play now with a stranger.
Laura Cugusi is an artist, researcher, photographer, filmmaker and writer. After studies in media, sociology and political science, she has been involved in multiple research projects focusing on migration, borders, public space and their representation in the media. She works with analogue and digital photography, video, drawing and sound. She is always interested in learning new languages.
Mandy Saunders
Title: Suck Up the Jam
You are in charge of filling up vats of jam at the jam factory, but you have taken your eye off the ball and now blobs of jam are splattering everywhere! Use the controls on your awesome machine to suck up the jam before your supervisor sees the mess!
Mandy Saunders is a producer working for a games company in Woking, Surrey. Even though she is a pretty big coding n00b, she likes to make short, quirky games in her spare time and this is her second collaboration with Code Liberation. She also used to work in a jam factory. @cheekyyoyo
Natasha Trotman
Traces
Traces falls under the umbrella project Tangible Statistics Linguistics which explores the texture of neurodivergent experiences. Traces has an ultimate aim of turning the notions of ‘error’ on its head. Each error enables the player to gain snippets of data; Enabling the player to learn more about neurodivergence with the resulting experience fostering empathy and awareness of the subject.
Natasha Trotman is an MA student in Information Experience Design graduate from the Royal College of Art, with a background in graphic design and computer science. Her practice includes human-computer interaction, craft, and working with data, exploring the voices within quantitative and qualitative data, and creating physical interactions through investigative play. She has exhibited widely since 2013. @trottykins
Elvia Vasconcelos
Title: The Internet
‘The Internet’ is the band I’ve been listening to (rather obsessively) lately. Look them up. The internet is the place where I spend most of my waking time. The other day, my mate told me “I work on the internet”. #LOLZ This ‘The Internet’ is about clicking, about infinite scrolling, about bleeding eyes, about always wanting more. When are you going to stop?
Elvia Vasconcelos is a Designer, wannabe hacker, compulsive drawer and dressmaker. She enjoys torturing toasters and other domestic objects. Earlier this year Elvia tried to have a relationship with an Alexa and failed - look up ‘Alexa Diaries’. Her work is guided by a desire to hold on to things but not exactly to hold them in place. website
Special thanks to Mark Caswell-Daniels for his infinite patience.
Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE
Description: Target practice meets space invaders - can you get the highest score? Bio for creator: Lorna Hamilton-Brown is an artist known as the ‘Banksy of knitting’. She works with a range of mediums including (but not limited to) pen & ink, knitting, and sound. Currently she is in the final year of an MA in Knitted Textiles at the Royal College of Art. www.lornahamiltonbrown.com @lhamiltonbrown
Caroline Yan Zheng
Title: Cuddle
Description: The game experiment on adding physical sensation to virtual experience. How hug could be transmitted remotely to help build social bond and companionship. It contributes to mental health but also challenges on what data privacy mean when digital becomes physical.
Caroline is a designer and researcher in fashion, wearable technology and interactive experience. She is interested in how “touch” can be wearable. She is doing a PhD at the Royal College of Art on designing with soft robotics for affective interaction.
Rachel Clancy
Title: In Other Words || Images:
Description: In tattooing, it is not unusual for a client to have a particular word or phrase drawn in a language they do not speak, sometimes simply because they consider another alphabet or language system to be more beautiful. In Other Words presents four different graphic alphabets which allow users to generate their own designs by typing phrases into the text box. Each letter character has its own image, but the size and placement are set at random - so the same design will never appear twice.
More images will be shared on the project’s Instagram: in.other.words.gallery
Rachel Clancy is a graphic designer, illustrator, and tattoo artist in training. Instagram: @fanceclancy || Twitter: @_Fance
Federica Ciotti
Title: Underwater
Description: Toxic pollution is spreading across the oceans, from the surface of the sea until the dark depth of the Mariana trench. Help the fish to stay alive, play the game, be aware. Run from plastics, avoid chemicals and find the messages in bottles, what do they say ?
Fede is a visual artist with a background in humanities. She has been filling notebooks with fishes since 2014. After her MA in Semiotics, she focused on doodling as a form of communication. She spent the past five years consistently scribing on walls, travelling with her kit of pens and colours, observing, listening to people around the globe and drawing their stories. @fedeciotti
Jazz Willett
Title: Bogged Down
Description: You are out of bog roll, and it’s your mission to retrieve it without falling down.
Jazz is an Artist, designer and novice gamemaker. They enjoy making silly and bizarre things, and their background is in Interaction & Communication.
About the show
We all worked together to build our exhibit. We CNCed all of the furnture we designed together at Machines Room. We came to together and worked to decorate our space.
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2017 in NYC
We hope you had a fabulous 2017. We feel like things flew by in a flash and wanted to take a minute to recap before discussing plans for this year. I was really excited to look back on the year in New York, as I think we ran a number of pretty significant events. It was also exciting to know that our London chapter was also having a great year!
Last year, we were a major part of Global Game Jam at the Playcrafting event - providing official Safe Space support for the first time. Rachel, Adina and I ran workshops through the event.
Global Game Jam Promotional Video produced by Playcrafing
During women’s history month, Maria’s VR game was featured by Playcrafting and I was invited to represent Code Liberation on a panel about women in games.
In February, Caroline and I ran a Music Hack workshop using p5.js to generate synths and visuals at MomaPS1 at the opening event of a series of Sunday sessions exploring the relationship between electronic music / technology and non-binary gender positions. It was a wonderful event that Honey Dijon then gave an inspirational talk at after. At the event, we also showcased a games made by Code Liberation women.
Over the course of the year, we were able to welcome Adina, Holly, Kat, and Maria as new members. This enabled us to work with Y&R on a series of concepts for their UN Whole Story campaign, which culminated in a workshop with a NY Girl Scouts troop, teaching them some basic 3D modeling and art based software skills for an Augmented Reality app of the same name. This also helped us raise around $6,500 for this event. As you all know, raising funds has been a big challenge for the organization so this is indeed no small feat. All of you pitched in for this and it was amazing to see it come together, despite all the obstacles put in front of us.
instagram photos from the event
As we move into 2018, we also want to acknowledge a major challenge that we faced in 2017 - the high number of traveling and away members. Most of our members are high achievers, and are in great places in their careers, which in NY means that you are usually somewhere else half the time, speaking, teaching, working and learning. This meant that we are not really able to get together often and spontaneously.
NEXT STEPS:
We are looking at reshaping the org in 2018 to support creative research around Games, AI and Play. Expect great things and stay tuned. More projects are in the works with the V&A.